Stolen

by Daniel Palmer

  “How goes your game?” Clegg asked me.

  “It’s growing and going,” I said.

  “It was a real lifesaver,” I wanted to say. Well, before Uretsky called, that is.

  From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a guy around my age, thin, hood over his head, sunglasses on indoors. He bumped clumsily up against the blond woman’s stool. He wasn’t that quick or that skilled in his fumbling attempt to snatch her purse. The purse got caught on the back of the stool, but he pulled on the strap hard enough to snap it.

  “Hey!” the surprised woman shouted. The commotion turned heads, but shock and surprise kept every patron firmly rooted in place. The thief accelerated as he raced past my bar stool. Clegg, still holding his sticky chicken wing, nonchalantly reached behind with his free hand to grab hold of the fleeing man’s sweatshirt. With startling quickness, Clegg yanked the man to the floor and at the same instant leapt up from his stool. The man fell with a hard thud, and I heard the air rush out of his lungs. Before he could wiggle away, Clegg was kneeling on his back, wrenching his arms behind him to snap his silver bracelets in place.

  “Yo, clown town,” Clegg said, his voice calm and his breathing even. “Looks like you picked the wrong bar to snatch from.”

  Applause filled the room as I handed the woman back her purse and Clegg hoisted the handcuffed man to his feet. I motioned to Clegg, because I’d obviously played no real part in his apprehension. Still, the victim thanked us both profusely.

  “This job would be great if it weren’t for all the criminals,” Clegg said to me as he took out the handcuffed man’s wallet to check his ID. Next, Clegg got out his cell phone, presumably to call for backup. “Here’s your living proof that crime doesn’t pay, Johnny,” Clegg said, turning the thief to face me. The man looked remorseful only because he’d been captured.

  Why did Clegg just say that to me? I wondered. Here’s your living proof that crime doesn’t pay. Could he know?

  Clegg cupped his cell phone’s receiver and then, turning to me, said, “Brookline dispatch. I’m on hold.” The crowd kept still and hushed, watching the spectacle of a plainclothes police officer pressing a handcuffed man up against their neighborhood bar.

  A minute or so ticked by with Clegg holding his phone tight to his ear. His expression revealed a growing frustration. He kept nodding and occasionally would say into the phone, “Yeah . . . all right . . . okay . . . What’s going on?” He listened awhile, then something about Clegg’s expression changed—he got a disgusted look, but not one that conveyed any agitation. “Really? No shit,” he said. “Really? That’s all sorts of messed up. . . . No, don’t worry. . . . Yeah, I’m sure . . . I’ll keep him occupied.” Clegg ended the call, then said to the guy he nabbed, “Hey, buddy, looks like you’re going to have to wait awhile in my car until we get some Brookline PD here to take you to the station for booking. Promise me you’re not going to mess up my backseat?”

  The guy said nothing; he just looked away.

  “Want to walk with me, John?” Clegg asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  The bartender comped our tab, brushing us outside, as though worried we might attempt to fight his goodwill gesture. There were cheers and a rousing round of applause as we vacated the premises. Clegg held up his hand, acknowledging the patrons’ appreciation with a slight wave, the way a baseball player might try to appease the crowd after a game-turning home run. We walked half a block with people on the street staring at the three of us, speculating as to the circumstance.

  It didn’t take long for Clegg to get the handcuffed perp settled into the backseat of his unmarked police car. “No messing up my ride,” he instructed again.

  The guy didn’t reply.

  “What’s the delay getting the police here?” I asked.

  “Some big blowup just down the road has almost every cop in Brookline tied up,” Clegg said. “It won’t be too much longer.”

  “What kind of blowup?” I asked.

  “Oh, some dude came home to find his girlfriend murdered.”

  “Yikes,” I said.

  “Yikes is right,” Clegg said. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “I’m assuming you do.”

  “I’m close with the dispatcher, so I got the skinny. Looks like the guy who did it cut off the girl’s fingers.”

  “Shit.”

  “He put two fingers on her lips, one in each ear, then two covering her eyes.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Get it?” Clegg asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil.”

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “Holy shit is right.”

  “Where did this happen?”

  “Right down the road,” Clegg said, nodding in the direction where I now lived.

  “No. What address? I mean.”

  It couldn’t be, I was thinking. It couldn’t be.

  “Why?” Clegg asked.

  “I want to know which way to avoid when I’m heading home.”

  “No worries. I’ll drive you.”

  “No, I’ve got to meet Ruby.”

  “Four-fifty-seven Harvard Avenue,” Clegg said.

  I felt the ground give way and had to steady myself using the door handle of Clegg’s car. I found my balance, but the ground below me turned unsteady like the sea. Four-fifty-seven Harvard Avenue was the building where we had rented an apartment as Elliot and Tanya Uretsky. I knew at that moment exactly what Uretsky had meant when he said he was going to kill someone close to us. He didn’t mean close by relationship. He meant close by proximity.

  He knew who we were. He knew where we lived. My cell phone rang. I took it out and looked at the caller ID. The number came up as unknown. It rang again.

  I answered it.

  CHAPTER 15

  “Hello?” I said into my phone. My strangled voice came out shaky, more like a whimper than a word. I moved away from Clegg, turning my back so he couldn’t see me, couldn’t overhear me, either.

  “Hello, John,” Uretsky said. His distinct rasp, the resonance of his baritone voice, that unsettling calm were as familiar to me as a Beatles song. “Yes, I know your real name, and no, you can’t know how. I want you to listen very carefully.”

  “What have you done?” I said, speaking in a low voice. I took a few more steps away from Clegg. “What the hell have you done?” That came out harsh, a low, growling whisper. My heart was thrumming wildly.

  “Listen means don’t talk, dumb ass,” Uretsky snapped. “Are you listening?”

  “Yes,” I said, breathing out the word in one long hiss.

  “Your wife is wearing an olive-green sweater and blue jeans,” Uretsky said, speaking quickly now. “She’s with a girl named Elisa, and I know that they’re at the Deco Bar on Beacon Street. I also know that Ruby has been drinking club soda and lime all night, because alcohol and Verbilifide don’t mix very well. I know that Elisa is a pretty, dark-haired girl who won’t stay pretty for long if you don’t do exactly as I say. Do you understand?”

  Clegg surprised me with a tap on my shoulder. I recoiled from his touch, as though his hands were an electric cattle prod. I must have looked like a wild man to him, my eyes flickering, mouth agape, and sweat beading up on my brow.

  “Johnny, you all right?” Clegg asked. “You look white as my ass.”

  The phone was still pressed to my ear as Uretsky spoke. “Tell that cop friend of yours that it’s Ruby. Tell him she’s not feeling well.”

  He knew I was with Clegg?

  My head darted about in all directions. I glanced into the glimmering windows of the apartments across the street, into storefronts, crowded restaurants, and bars, which existed aplenty in this section of town. He could see me! Good God in heaven, Uretsky was watching me! I kept looking around, noticing the multitudes of people milling about on this warm spring evening, many with cell phones mounted to their ear.

  “Say it, John,�
� Uretsky urged. “Tell him that Ruby isn’t feeling very well and you need to go.”

  “Yo, bro? Are you all right?” Clegg asked.

  “Ruby,” I managed.

  A flash of concern washed across Clegg’s face, genuine, as though Ruby were family. “What’s going on?” Clegg asked in a voice steeped with worry. “Is everything all right?”

  “Tell him she’s fine, but you have to leave,” Uretsky instructed again.

  I repeated those exact words, as though in a trance.

  “I’ll drive you,” Clegg said.

  “He’s got a prisoner to deal with,” Uretsky said into my ear.

  How does he know that? Where is he?

  “You’ve got your hands full,” I said to Clegg, nodding my head in the direction of his police car. I couldn’t see into the car’s dark interior, but I assumed the man Clegg had apprehended was still seated inside, waiting for the Brookline police to cart him off to jail. I tapped Clegg’s shoulder a few times. “I’m all right,” the gesture was intended to say. “Just let me go.” Hoping that allayed his concerns, I started to back away from Clegg slowly.

  “Johnny!” Clegg shouted at me.

  Turning my back to him now, I began a trot that soon broke into a run, yelling over my shoulder as I accelerated, “I’ll call you!”

  Clegg shouted, “Johnny,” again, but I gave him no response. I kept the phone, with Uretsky still on the line, fixed to my ear but didn’t speak until I had turned the corner, a block away from where I had left Clegg standing, his expression unmistakably and understandably confused.

  “You still there, John?” I heard Uretsky say.

  I slowed my pace, soon coming to a full stop. I couldn’t yet catch my breath, so I had to double over, resting my hands on my knees to increase the airflow. “I’m here,” I said, panting. “I’m here.”

  “Good boy,” Uretsky said. “So listen, you’ve obviously lost round one.”

  “Why?” I said. My voice sounded constricted, as though Uretsky’s hands magically extended through the phone to choke my windpipe. “Why did you do it? Why did you kill that woman?”

  “Because she was there. Isn’t that why you once climbed mountains? Because they were there.”

  Uretsky chuckled hauntingly, while I staggered into an alley directly behind a Chinese restaurant and proceeded to vomit up my dinner of chicken wings and beer. The sour stench from my stomach mixed foully with the smells from the kitchen.

  “You’re insane,” I yelled before several gagging dry heaves put me on my knees. A cook from the restaurant, draped in white clothes blotched with food stains, flung open the back door to check on the commotion. I shielded my face with the back of my hand and slunk deeper into the alley, away from his prying eyes.

  “My mental state is not your concern,” Uretsky said. “Do you know what is?”

  I couldn’t answer—the nerves connecting my brain to my mouth seemed severed.

  Uretsky answered for me. “Your concern should be that poor woman you let down.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” I stammered.

  “Of course you did,” Uretsky snapped. “You didn’t even try to steal the scarves.”

  “I didn’t think you were serious.”

  Uretsky scoffed, a loud “Ha!” “I told you very specifically the penalty for failure. It’s your fault you didn’t believe me, not mine. You lost round one after I gave you every conceivable chance to win. I wish you could have seen what I did to her, John. It would have definitely inspired you to try a little harder. You were at home while I was doing it. In fact, I was right below you.”

  “Please . . . don’t . . .”

  Then I thought, Right below me. Could it have been our downstairs neighbor, Rhonda?

  “She was begging me,” Uretsky continued. “Big, thick tears rolling down her cheeks. I gagged her, of course. I didn’t want her screams bringing anyone to her rescue. You’ve got to think these things through, John. It takes thought to be on the wrong side of the law, but you’ll learn that soon enough. Anyway, I used these pruning shears I bought at Home Depot to cut her fingers. They snapped off just like I was breaking a stubborn branch. Snap. Snap. Snap. I figured she’d pass out by finger four, but it happened right after I cut off the second one.”

  “Oh God,” I whimpered.

  “God? Really? God?” Uretsky laughed a little. “You know, most criminals don’t find God until they’re in the slammer,” he said. “And you’ve got a long way to go before that happens to you. Now, if you play my game, and this time you try to win, I can assure you, you’ll never find yourself confined to those ugly four walls.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “Are you listening, John?”

  How to describe my shock? It welled up inside me, all consuming, entirely paralyzing. It was an inescapable blackness, a fast-acting cancer swelling from within, hollowing out my guts, turning my blood to molasses, slowing my heartbeat to a tick and my breathing to a trickle.

  “Please . . . stop. . . . I don’t want to hear this. . . .”

  “Too late for that,” Uretsky said. “Now, pay attention. Pay very close attention. I’m using a phone that cannot be traced. Don’t even bother to try.” I said nothing, so Uretsky continued. “Also, if the name Uretsky comes up in connection with the investigation into the gruesome murder of a youngish woman at four-fifty-seven Harvard Avenue, I’m going to kill again—and it will be someone you know, maybe a friend, a mother, or just a passing acquaintance. Contact with you is all I need to mark them for death. The point is—and this is a promise—someone will die, and die horribly, and their blood will be on your hands. Just so we’re perfectly clear, that means you keep your pal David Clegg in the dark about everything. No mention of me. No mention of our game. Do you understand?”

  I tried to answer but still could not find my voice.

  “Do you understand?” Uretsky screamed the question with enough force to bloody my eardrums.

  “Yes!” I shouted back, crying as I spoke. “Yes! I understand! Damn you, I understand!”

  “Good,” Uretsky said, placid again. “Another rule,” he continued. “You can’t move out of the apartment you rented in my name under any circumstance. You’re to remain in the apartment above that poor murdered woman until you either win or lose my game. Is that understood?”

  I nodded, dumbly—he couldn’t see me—and numbly.

  “Is that understood?” Uretsky asked again.

  “Yes,” I squeaked out.

  I thought of Ruby, recalling the joy on her face as she was packing our bags to move. What would her look say when I told her that I’d stolen the identity of a raging psychopath, and that he was holding us hostage in an apartment I had rented under false pretenses? What would her reaction be when she learned we had no way out of this nightmare but to do as we were told?

  “Good,” Uretsky said. “Because it’s time for you to play round two. The punishment for failure is that you’ll be arrested for insurance fraud and Ruby will lose access to the medication she needs to keep alive. In addition to that, I’ll still kill again, another woman, and it could be anybody who is even remotely connected to you. Sound like high enough stakes to you?”

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Like I said before, a criminal, no matter what the crime, is always a thief of something. You stole the truth the moment you took my identity. Now you must play the part.”

  “How? I don’t understand!” I was shouting. “How do I play the part?”

  “Oh, you’ll see. It’s no fun if I spoil all the surprises.”

  I kept yelling at Uretsky, pleading with him to talk to me. I was on my knees in a wretched alleyway that stunk of rotted garbage, with shards of glass digging painfully into the fabric of my jeans, shaking. “How do I play the part? How do I do it?” Occasionally, a sob would escape my lips, but not enough to stop my continued questions, even though Uretsky’s call had long gone dead.

  CHAPTER 16
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br />   A young Brookline police officer, male, close-shaved head, round face, escorted Ruby and me up to our apartment. He informed us that the victim was a thirty-two-year-old dental hygienist named Rhonda Jennings. We knew her as someone about to get engaged to her boyfriend, interested in learning yoga, and who was once kind enough to bring us a frozen pie. Rolls of yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off the landing directly below where we lived. “Don’t touch anything,” we were instructed. “Keep your hands to your sides.” If our police escort knew my real feelings, he might have said instead: “Don’t get sick in the stairwell. Don’t sweat so much. Don’t pass out, even though you look like you’re about to do just that.”

  Before we were allowed back in the building, Officer Teddy Walsh—his name, according to the badge he wore—had us answer some questions on the sidewalk.

  “Did you know the woman who lived below you?”

  “We met her once,” I said.

  “How long have you been living here?”

  “A few months,” I said.

  “Have you seen anybody suspicious hanging around . . . loiterers, somebody who just looked out of place?”

  “No.”

  Officer Walsh wrote down my answers in a little white notebook. Meanwhile, all around us strobe lights of every color in the rainbow lit up the night sky. More yellow crime-scene tape dangled from banisters and clung to door frames like macabre streamers. The answers I’d given Officer Walsh were all the truth. Could this be my next test? Round two in Uretsky’s twisted game? So far, I didn’t need to lie to the police; I needed only to keep the truth well concealed. Was that playing the part? I wondered.

  I’m going to kill again. . . . Contact with you is all I need to mark them for death.

  At that moment, I wanted to tell him everything. Shout out my confessional like he was a faith healer, and I, a man with a broken spirit. I managed to temper my desire, though it boiled inside me.

  A criminal thinks things through. . . .

  Hadn’t Uretsky said that, or something close to it? Wouldn’t he be prepared for me to talk to the police—to confess everything? No matter what I did, even if I sacrificed my own freedom to admit to all I had done, Uretsky would still make another kill. And the blood of that kill would be on my hands. No question about it. I had to wait this out. Figure out how to “play the part.” For the moment, at least, I was Elliot Uretsky’s hostage, despite my freedom to go where I wanted and do whatever I pleased.